Startup Execution 101: Build Your Company Brain

Stop being the bottleneck. Build systems that run without you.

Every founder hits the wall. Clients are waiting, teammates are unclear, and you’re fielding nonstop pings for context. The issue isn’t your effort; it’s the lack of architecture. Scattered docs, buried Slack threads, outdated SOPs, and a Notion space no one trusts. Your vision, decisions, and guiding principles remain trapped in your mind.

If you want your team to operate efficiently without constantly chasing you down, and your business to grow without breaking, you need a solid digital foundation. One that captures the how, the why, and the what behind everything you do. A system that turns your thinking into something your team can access, use, and improve without a meeting or Slack thread.

Start with Google Drive as your primary storage location for final files and templates. Use Notion as your living brain, the central source for SOPs, goals, decisions, and day-to-day operations. Drive holds the record. Notion carries the rhythm.

As the company scales, so does the system. Your team contributes, updates, and documents. The brain shifts from something only you manage to something everyone owns. That’s how you get out of the weeds. That’s how the business grows.

Why This Matters (and Why Founders Ignore It Until It’s Painful)

Every decision, process, and lesson you discover is intellectual property. If it only exists in your mind, it vanishes the moment you’re pulled into the next urgent task.

The consequences are significant. Your team works less efficiently due to a lack of essential context. New hires take a substantial amount of time to become efficient because they are not provided with adequate resources. You are the key to unlocking their potential, as you hold the knowledge of how things operate. When employees leave, critical knowledge should not be lost; instead, it can be documented and shared to strengthen the team’s expertise.

This is not merely about being more organized; it’s about creating an infrastructure that enables you to delegate and grow without everything having to go through you.

Where Are You Right Now

Ask yourself: do you already have a structure in place, or are you starting from scratch? If you do have a system, is it clear and logical? Can someone new find what they need quickly, or is it a scavenger hunt through outdated folders and random files?

Is it organized, or just familiar chaos?

Here’s the truth: it doesn’t matter where you’re starting from. Whether you’ve got nothing and need to build from the ground up, or you’ve got something that’s grown messy over time, you’re in the right place. From here, we’ll apply a standard, clean it up, and set a structure that can support the business moving forward.

Step 1: Treat Your Tools Like Team Members

Stop thinking of Notion, Drive, and Slack as apps. Think of them as roles with specific responsibilities.

Notion = Your Real-Time Brain

This is where the living content resides: SOPs, goals, KPIs, check-ins, meeting notes, and active projects—the current state of how your business operates.

Google Drive = Your Vault

This is where you store final versions, financial models, contracts, and legal documents. The stuff that’s version-controlled and official.

Slack = Your Feed

It’s for real-time communication, not for making decisions or documenting information. If it’s important enough to remember later, it doesn’t belong in Slack.

Golden rule: If you need to reference it next month, it shouldn’t live in a chat thread.

Step 2: Build a Folder Structure That Mirrors How You Think

Your folder structure reflects how your organization thinks. If it’s chaos, your ops are chaos.

Start with this foundation:

01_Company

02_Finance

03_Marketing

04_Operations

05_Product

06_Sales

07_HR

08_Legal

Then layer in smart subfolders:

• Finance > Models > 2025_Cashflow_v2.xlsx

• Marketing > Content > Social > Q1_Campaigns

• Product > Roadmap > Q3_Priorities

• Operations > SOPs > Client_Onboarding_v3

Naming conventions matter. Use a consistent, searchable format:

• 20250618_ClientOnboarding_SOP_v1.docx

• Q3_ProductRoadmap_DRAFT.pdf

• 2025_Marketing_Budget_FINAL.xlsx

Already a mess? Don’t start over. Start fresh. Use the new structure and fix forward as you touch files.

Step 3: Sync Notion and Drive

The biggest productivity killer? Information silos.

Here’s the flow:

• Create or update docs in Google Drive (this is your source of truth)

• Mirror or summarize the workflow in Notion (this is where people work from)

• Link both documents in both directions. Every document in Drive should be referenced in Notion, and every SOP in Notion should link to its corresponding template in Drive.

Example:

• Your offer letter template lives in Drive

• Your hiring process lives in Notion

• Both reference each other. No dead ends. No guesswork.

This turns your documentation into a usable system, not a graveyard.

Step 4: Set Permissions That Create Clarity

You’re building transparency, not secrets. Start with open access, then restrict only what truly needs protection.

• Leadership should have cross-functional visibility

• Teams should manage their areas

• Sensitive docs like HR, legal, and financials stay private

• Everyone should know where to find what they need

If your system makes things more challenging to find, it’s broken.

Step 5: Download the Founder Brain

This is the foundation for everything else. Your team needs more than task lists; they need to understand how the business makes decisions, what matters most, and how to think like an owner. Start by documenting the stuff that usually lives in your head. Not just how to do things, but why things are done a certain way.

What to capture:

Guiding Principles

• What values shape how the company operates? What lines won’t you cross? What does “good” look like?

Decision Frameworks

• How do you prioritize opportunities? What questions do you always ask before moving forward? What gets a fast no?

Vision and Strategy

• What’s the long-term goal? What’s the north star your team should align to? What are you building, and why does it matter?

Strengths and Weaknesses

• Where do you win? Where are you vulnerable? Be honest—this helps your team make better calls on where to focus and what to avoid.

Operating Standards

• What’s your default approach to quality, speed, and communication? What are the expected norms across the organization?

The goal isn’t to create a giant wiki that no one reads. The goal is to give your team the clarity to act without always needing to consult you. To create alignment around how you work, what matters, and where you’re going. The sooner you put this behind you, the sooner your team can step up and lead alongside you.

Make It Stick: Ownership Over Everything

Systems only work if someone owns them. If no one is responsible for a document, it goes stale. If no one knows which version is the source of truth, people stop trusting the system. That’s how you end up with five different versions of the same SOP and no one following any of them.

Every document needs a clear owner. Someone is accountable for keeping it relevant, connected to how the team works, and deleting it when it’s no longer needed.

This isn’t just about updating files. It’s about building a culture of clarity and accountability.

Operational habits that keep your system alive:

• Assign ownership to every doc and template

• Review key SOPs monthly and archive what’s obsolete

• Clean house quarterly and remove duplicates or outdated drafts

• Use version control with intention, not clutter

• Encourage iteration and reward people who improve the system

Your documentation should evolve with your business. If it’s not being referenced, updated, and relied on daily, it’s not a system. It’s shelfware. Build living documents. Build real ownership. That’s how you keep your company brain sharp.

Your 30-Day Jumpstart Plan

This isn’t busywork. It’s about establishing a system that makes your business run more smoothly without you becoming the system itself.

Week 1: Foundation

• Define your core tools and what they’re responsible for

• Set up your base folder architecture

• Write down three real decisions you made recently, and why

Week 2: Brain Download

• Outline current priorities, tradeoffs, and your north star

• Build templates for repeatable processes

• Lock in clear naming conventions

Week 3: Team Rollout

• Walk your team through the setup

• Assign document ownership for all key processes

• Require doc links for any major project, client, or deliverable

Week 4: Culture Integration

• Set up monthly review cycles for SOPs

• Clean up dead files, outdated processes, and duplicates

• Give praise when someone improves a doc, system, or process

The Bottom Line

If the business breaks when you step away, it’s not a business—it’s a job with overhead. You can’t grow if you’re still in the system. Build infrastructure that frees you up to lead, not babysit. That’s how you get out of the weeds and into the cockpit.

Don’t overthink it. A functional system beats a perfect one every time. What matters is whether your team can find what they need, make wise decisions, and move the ball forward, without asking you 50 questions first.

If you’re ready to get out of the weeds and build a system that scales, I help founders do precisely that.

Explore more posts on systems, execution, and startup strategy, or schedule time on my calendar for hands-on support.

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